Alcohol consumption is responsible for 2.8-M deaths per year across the globe, with cancer the leading cause of alcohol-related death among people aged 50 years and older, warn researchers, who also emphasize that there is no safe level of alcohol consumption.

The findings come from the latest version of the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD), which analyzed data on 28-M people from 195 countries to estimate the prevalence of alcohol consumption, the amounts consumed, and the associated harms..

The analysis found that among individuals aged 15 to 49 years, alcohol accounted for around 4% of deaths in women and 12% in men.

Tuberculosis and road injuries were the leading causes of death related to alcohol.

For those aged 50 years and older, alcohol was linked to 27% of deaths in women and 19% of deaths in men, with cancer the leading cause of alcohol-related death.

Overall, consuming just one drink a day increased the risk of developing alcohol-related health problems by 0.5% Vs abstaining; drinking 5 drinks a day led to 37% increase in risk.

Lead author Max G. Griswold, MA, Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, University of Washington, Seattle, said in a release that although previous studies have suggested that alcohol is protective against some conditions, “we found that the combined health risks associated with alcohol increase with any amount of alcohol.

“In particular, the strong association between alcohol consumption and the risk of cancer, injuries, and infectious diseases offset the protective effects for ischemic heart disease in women in our study,” he said.

“Although the health risks associated with alcohol starts off being small with one drink a day, they then rise rapidly as people drink more,” he added.

The new findings echo those from in the 2014 World Cancer Report, which found a dose/response relationship between alcohol consumption and certain cancers.

Mr. Griswold calls for public health policies to focus on “reducing alcohol consumption to the lowest level” and to revise the “widely held view of the benefits of alcohol.”

Coauthor Emmanuela Gakidou, PhD, also from Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, went further, declaring: “Alcohol poses dire ramifications for future population health in the absence of policy action today.

“Our results indicate that alcohol use and its harmful effects on health could become a growing challenge as countries become more developed, and enacting or maintaining strong alcohol control policies will be vital,” she said.

She suggested that countries look at measures such as excise taxes and controlling the availability and advertising of alcohol.

Paul Ebeling

Paul A. Ebeling, polymath, excels in diverse fields of knowledge. Pattern Recognition Analyst in Equities, Commodities and Foreign Exchange and author of “The Red Roadmaster’s Technical Report” on the US Major Market Indices™, a highly regarded, weekly financial market letter, he is also a philosopher, issuing insights on a wide range of subjects to a following of over 250,000 cohorts. An international audience of opinion makers, business leaders, and global organizations recognizes Ebeling as an expert.